Friday, March 9, 2012

The ghost of festivals past (AM)


I don't know about the rest of you, but around these parts there has been a lot of talk about Golden Plains. Lots of planning, ride organising, that kind of thing. A lot of talk about eskies. Joining us this year will be Monica Leweski, Roman Poleski, Big Bertha and Solo McGee. And that's just the eskies. Human-wise Planny McPlan and a metaphorical version of the witches from Charmed will be part of the crew. Yeah, it's gonna be pretty good.

Anyway, it got me thinking about some great things and weird things and just things that have happened at festivals past. In no particular order and signifying little more than what I remember here is a list of some of those things:

There was the time when in the car queue for Golden Plains one hot March morning AWOL pulled out yellow vodka jelly shots. That was the best.

Once at the Big Day Out I saw this boy I liked from work. He was cute and really nice but he wore these shoes I just couldn't come at. They were just walking shoes really, but they didn't sit right with me. (It's true, I was young and superficial. Not like now.) I didn't know how much I should invest in liking him. And then there he was at the BDO and I could get everyone else to make a judgement. Russeth and Splat were pretty discouraging after seeing the shoe situation. Needless to say nothing much ever happened with that guy. But I think that was more about what he thought about me than what I thought about his shoes.

K, Ribos and I once went to this festival in Cobram called Peaches and Cream (could that be right?). Now, keep in mind this was a really long time ago. We drove all the all the way up there because silverchair were playing. Then we sat in the car for about 7 hours playing games until silverchair started at 10PM or something. We got out of the car watched silverchair debut their Neon Ballroom material then got in the car and drove to Ribos's grandmas house in Shepparton. What? Am I making this up? If memory serves I think we could not be bothered dealing with the people. What?

What I really wish, is that every person reading this could have been standing with K and me at Meredith the year that Pickle and Minderbinder thought they saw Claire Danes. For real. "Hey," they whispered to us, "Look behind you. There is probably the most famous person you've ever seen." K and I looked. "Claire Danes!" They whispered. "Whoa!" K and I said. "Good one!" Thinking that they had just played a fantastic round of celebrity doppelgangers. That girl really did look like Claire Danes. But then they just kept going! "I can't believe Claire Danes is here!"They kept saying in reverent hushed tones. And it became quite clear they really believed that Claire Danes was just sitting a couple of metres from us on her esky. Oh, oh god. They just believed it so hard.

And then, there is the beautiful moment. I know people talk about The Dirty Three and the storm at Meredith. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For me it was the year LB and I went and none of our friends went. Seriously, it was just us. And late on the Saturday night Data Rock played and they finished with "I've Had the Time of My Life" and everyone there was having the best time, swaying and singing along.  There was a great light show. You guys, it was beautiful.

I want to show you a clip of Data Rock playing that song but there are no quality clips out there. So I thought I'd just show Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze dancing to the original. But stupid YouTube won't let me embed it!

Instead let's watch Peaches. Hey, I wonder if K has any other great festival memories!





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